


Listen

by CrazyTaraWitch



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 14:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2432426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrazyTaraWitch/pseuds/CrazyTaraWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Susan/Talia + "Don’t listen to them. Don’t you EVER listen to them."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listen

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about writing a scene where Talia comes to Susan in a dream and tells her not to listen to the Corps if they ever tell her Control’s gone and she’s back, but turns out I didn’t want to break my hearts, so I wrote this instead. Some angst, but because I’m me there’s still a happy ending.

"Bester said… Bester said she’s not gone," Talia choked out. "That’s what everyone thinks, that she’ll come back. That I’ll be lost again."

"Don’t listen to them. Don’t you EVER listen to them," Susan commanded, her voice hard but her eyes soft. She wrapped her arms around Talia, and the telepath finally let her tears begin to fall.

"I’ve got you Talia," Susan promised. "I won’t let them take you from me again."

“It hurt so much,” Talia admitted, face hidden against Susan’s shoulder. It was easier to talk about like this, cradled by her lover, finally safe. “To be trapped in my own mind, to see my face in the mirror but know it wasn’t me, to hear my own voice saying such cruel things to the woman I…”

“Look at me,” Susan ordered, and as Talia shifted and their gazes met she ached at the pain she saw written across the beautiful face she had missed for far too long. “I can’t pretend to know what it was like for you; it’s horrible enough to be scanned, but to have another whole person in your mind, someone controlling you, I can’t even imagine what that’s like. But don’t for a second worry about me Talia. Losing you hurt, but that woman wasn’t you, and I never once thought less of you for the things she said. She didn’t change how I felt about you; nothing could.”

Talia’s lips, so pale without the lipstick she usually wore, curved into a ghost of a smile. “And how did you feel about me Commander?”

Susan thought back to a hundred little moments.   
The day she’d met Talia, how hard the woman had tried to speak with her, her refusal to accept that her precious Corps could be in the wrong. The way her eyes had gotten glassy, as if on the verge of tears, when Susan spoke of her mother, as she was torn between loyalty and pain for a stranger’s loss.   
The way she walked; her confidence; her glare that was always hot, never icy until the day it wasn’t her.   
How she drank water when she was nervous. The way her own heart had ached to see Talia scanned by those Psi Cop bastards. Talia’s sorrow at losing her old friend.   
The way she came to the bar each night, ordering only water, and nodding at Susan as she arrived, never trying to make conversation but always watching her. They had danced around each other, always avoiding yet never able to stay away.   
They fought with fire over Alisa, one certain she knew what was right and the other certain she knew what was wrong. Susan recalled feeling the pull stronger than ever then, drawn in to this woman who believed in so much that Susan hated, and yet she couldn’t hate Talia, couldn’t hate someone who wanted what was right as badly as she did, even if her ideas about what that was were so completely different from her own.  
She recalled the way the angry tension between them had begun to fade as another kind of tension began to build; she had denied it for so long, but she had wanted Talia. Her poise, her grace, her calm mixed with passion.   
And then Talia had come to her door one night, and she couldn’t deny any longer that she wanted to know this woman. She remembered how Talia had tried to seem strong even though she was terrified, how she had been playful and bright even when it masked her pain and fear. She remembered how her heart had swelled at the knowledge she was the one Talia had chosen to come to.   
She remembered the playful banter, the smiles that had warmed every inch of her, the one passionate night they had spent together and how Talia had fallen asleep beside her looking peaceful and pure.   
She remembered Control taking over and how her stomach had dropped. She remembered how nauseated she’d felt as she left Talia’s quarters for the last time. 

She remembered all the loneliness she had felt after, how she had shut off her heart and focused on the job and told herself she was happy.

And she remembered the first moment she’d seen Talia—her Talia—again, how a hoarse voice had whispered “Susan,” and her heart had broken and soared all at once.  
How had she felt about Talia back then? It wasn’t hard to find the answer. The better question was, how did she feel about Talia now?  
Looking into her eyes, still so close to tears, Susan found that answer was easier still. 

“I love you Talia.”


End file.
